Tim Cheferson emerged from the curtain like a proud panther. He was dressed in an expensive, jet blue suit with streaks of a white shirt under the blazer. He arrived to a heavy plaudit of applause and bright lights from the cameras lit up the stage like a dazzling firework display. He made a mandatory wave to a random person in the audience; smiled his pearly white teeth; strolled up to his marker while the cheers and whistles from pundits continued. He soaked it in; watched dark blurry faces in the audience mesh together in the eruption of applause 

'Welcome,' he announced. 'I'm Tim Cheferson.' His voice boomed across the room. Aqua lights shone on him from every corner of the stage and a big screen behind him activated with the slow fade of the company logo. Silver limited.

'I know you've all been waiting for this for a very long time,' he teased.

A man from the crowd screamed, 'Tim, we love you!' And the audience laughed. Tim made a light, controlled chuckled. 'Here at Silver, we love you too.'

He opened his hands. 'We love all of you.'

The logo behind him vanished and it broke into a high definition video of a clouds rushing through the sky; presented from the first-person view of something soaring through the air. Every journalist, critic and fan watched with hanging mouths; the silence containing a buzz of electric hype; but it was only Tim's voice which filled the room.

'As a child, what is it we all wanted to do?'

He smiled, shrugged, continued. 'Maybe sweets before dessert, later bedtime, or..'

He had paced across the stage a little bit in this opening speech but now he returned to the center, ready for the big reveal.

'Or be a superhero. And what is it that so many super heroes do?' He paused and the clouds from the screen faded. A masked man flying through the air then emerged in front of the camera.

'Fly.' He declared.

The audience cheered again, louder than before, rushing to their feet and screaming. The camera flashes became hypnotic - Tim spread his arms like an eagle.

'Thanks to Silver, this is now a reality.' He boomed.

The screams were deafening and music poured out from the speakers on stage. The sound of clapping sounded like a tropical storm. Strobe lights flickered across the floor. It was a reception perfect for a rockstar.

'Ok then,' laughed Tim, ushering the audience to quieten after many minutes. The screen behind him showed a three-dimensional image of a wristband. It swayed around against a clinical white background.

'This is the iFly band,' he explained. 'It's very simple. You wear it and you will fly.'

-

The aftermath was a bustling commotion of people staring at the wristband in glass cubes. Wide eyes were pressed against it - photos snapping up the prototype, reviewers broadcasting the sensational announcement.

'Can you believe this?' snorted Preston Smith. 'Humans? Flying? This has to be a joke.'

His co-worker, Jasper Padman, dismissed the usual cynicism.

'This is what we've all been waiting for,' he said. 'We thought the rumours were too good to be true.'

'I still think they are,' confessed Preston.

Jasper flicked out his stylus and started jotting notes down on his portable screen. Preston was twirling a real pen between his fingers.

'I am very excited,' said Jasper, mid thought. 'Think how this will radicalise the world. Silver's stocks must be through the roof.'

Preston returned to the glass cube. He eyed the wrist band suspiciously. It looked like a regular fashion accessory excluding the tiny dimples embedded into the fabric.

'Each mark contains millions of electric impulses which helps.. users.. fly..' said Jasper. 'I feel like a fool writing this. Like this is a big prank. If it were not for the live broadcast, nobody would believe this.'

'I still don't,' said Preston with a sour face.

'You won't believe it even when the whole world is flying.'

Preston looked down at the floor. 'Think what this will do to airlines,' he retorted bitterly.

Jasper waved his hand around, dismissing his colleague again. 'People still need to carry their luggage. Tim was adamant that this wrist band helps the user fly and no one else. There's a weight limit, otherwise you don't fly.'

Their silence was drowned out by the continuous cheers of excitement and shuffling of feet as people elbowed each other to get a glimpse of the wrist band. There were several versions all nestled neatly in big cuboid shelves; each band different in colour and the same in technical ability.

Preston glanced at the wristbands again. 'Humans weren't meant to fly,' he proclaimed.

'Please,' laughed Jasper. 'You sound like a caveman. I understand that it's our job to critique, but can you, for once, just be excited?'

'I won't use them,' he retorted. 'Technology goes wrong all of the time. Why should I wait for it to fail while I'm flying?'

Jasper jotted something down with his stylus; something about a release date. 'Next.. few.. weeks.' He raised his eyes and looked up.

'Did you say something?'

'No, never mind,' said Preston disappointedly.

-

Preston walked across the stony path with frustration printed across his face.

'A year to this day since Tim released the iFly,' he thought solemnly.

 The roads were silent; wind whispering through like a ghost town. The trees swayed gently. He looked up and squinted into the clouds. There they were: a line of black silhouettes soaring in the distance. They were like ants crawling through the air. Highways of tiny figurines moving seamlessly with the wind. Hundreds of people; flying.

'Good evening honey,' said Preston's wife as he walked through the door.

'Hello Patricia.'

He threw his coat onto a hanger and slumped into a chair.

She looked up from the baby bouncing on her lap and frowned. 'What's wrong?'

Preston looked up at his lovely wife and their little baby boy. He walked over, leant down and kissed them both on the forehead. His eyes fell back to the floor and he sighed a sigh to empty his lungs.

'That stupid company,' he said finally.

'Honey -'

'No, no, please, let me finish,' he interrupted. 'Stupid iFly, stupid Cheferson, stupid customers.'

'You need to let people buy and do what they want.'

'Would you?' He challenged. 'Would you be happy to fly with our son in your arms?'

'The adverts warned us not to carry anyone. You must only fly on your own.'

'That doesn't stop anyone doing it. I've seen pictures; women carrying their babies and what's supporting them? A wristband!'

Patricia bobbed the baby up and down a few more times; the infant becoming minorly upset by his Father's raised voice and disgruntled tone. She then stood up, walked over to the cot and placed him into his slumber. She then gazed out to the window; surrounded by miles of greenery.

'You can see the appeal,' she said finally.

Preston waited for the explanation.

'People need to travel. And it's so expensive to now. Cars, trains, planes. If you can't afford the rocketing prices, then you're trapped out..' She trailed off.

'Trapped out here?'

'No, I didn't mean that.'

Preston went to the window and breathed slowly. 'Do you feel trapped here, honey? A house in this village is all we could afford.'

She shook her head.

'Patricia.'

'I just don't think the iFly is a bad thing.'

-

Tim Cheferson stood in front of a large plasma screen in a cool, silver room with a board of directors seated a table ahead of him. The screen was split into a grid of smaller squares: footage of people flying, news reports, critics, newspaper extracts and (the biggest screen) their sales figures.

'Marvellous, isn't it?' said an old, grey haired director with a fat neck.

Cheferson stroked his chin. 'Better than we could have hoped.'

A few directors sipped from polished glasses of water. A couple shuffled their papers like news reporters. One man was enchanted by the screen.

'So, the upgrade?' Questioned Tim.

A young man with a dark black mop of hair stood up. Aside from Tim, he was the only man in the room with hair. The man adjusted his glasses.

'We're thinking of allowing people to fly faster. It's a busy world. Let's speed things up.'

Tim was pleased. More money after all.

'Anything else?'

'No, not really,' admitted the man with dark hair. 'We're going to add a few new colours, gloss up the packaging a little bit. Give it a fancy name. iFly 2?'

Every director at the table watched Tim's still face.

'But ultimately,' continued the man, 'aside from the height of flight, the colours, the advertising, well, it will do nothing new.'

After a few moments of an uneasy silence, Tim nodded and the man took a deep satisfied breath.

'Very good,' said Tim. 'And now, the adverts.'

'We've signed a few deals, got a few celebrities to sport the wristband. We're going to get them to fly around and they'll be talking about it on their social media accounts. People love to copy celebrities. That should be enough.' He sat down and the man with a large neck stood up. He had a little device in his hand which magnified the stocks on screen.

'Business is very good sir.'

After a few more technicalities, the meeting ended and the cool evening set upon headquarters. With very little to do - aside from maintaining mammoth success - Tim decided he would leave early for once and take a quiet drive down the empty roads, in his car. He walked into the car park which had now turned into an array of empty bays; vacant white squares which had once been filled with vehicles on every corner.

'I think it's fantastic what you've done,' said a voice.

Tim turned around in surprise. It was the dark haired man. He had raced up to Tim and stood awkwardly, hanging a few feet away as if he dared not get too close. The rest of the directors could be seen soaring through the sky and disappearing into the distance with their iFly bands.

'Think of how much good we've done for the climate, driving down the need for cars.'

'Yes,' said Tim with deep thought, pretending that this had barely occurred to him.

Both said nothing. The man was nervous, still in awe of the superstar Tim had become and intimidated by the frosty distance his boss omitted from himself. Tim was still thinking about the climate.

'A good thing indeed,' muttered Tim, 'I wonder if we can capitalise on this. Feed it into our advertising.' He unlocked his car and perched himself in, still milling on the opportunity. 'Well done,' he said. 'Very good idea.'

Tim twisted the key into his ignition and the rumble of the car was suddenly the sound of an alien roar to the man.

'If you don't mind me wondering,' requested the man. 'I've noticed that you don't wear the wristband. You don't fly?'

Tim looked at the man with a flash of bewilderment.

'Afraid of heights,' he said, catching his composure. 'You would never catch me wearing one of those things.'

Tim then pressed hard on his pedals and drove off, leaving a thick smog of smoke behind him.

-

'I'm afraid I can't do anything for you,' grunted the construction worker. He was a large middle-aged man with a bushy black moustache.

Preston was angry; he had to get to the meeting but the bridge was off limits. The early bright morning was setting onto the greenery with a cool autumn breeze, birds chirping could be heard distantly.

'Isn't there anything you can do?'

There was only one way out of the village; via the bridge. And due to unexpected maintenance works the bridge was off limits. Preston looked into the distance where large, mechanical cranes could be seen removing slabs from the road. Patricia was right in her own subliminal ways; they were trapped in a world which had become dislocated from civilization - and their escape in the form of a wristband was being stamped on by Preston himself.

'It's just that I really need to be somewhere,' confessed Preston.

The man with a moustache looked at him blankly. 'Then fly there? There are some wrist bands on sale a few feet from here.'

Preston was wildly tempted. He couldn't be late for the meeting; and it had been a year since the iFly had been released with no reported incidents. A year ago he had sat with Jasper in the iFly conference; a cynical expression smeared on his face as Tim Cheferson had made the announcement of turning humans into flying creatures. It was a year ago since he'd preempted the literal fall of consumers from the sky with their brand new wristbands - and now he was starting to acknowledge his error.

'No, I simply could not,' replied Preston, snapping out of a dreamy trance. 'Those things are a death trap.'

The man looked at if Preston in the same way he would look at a naive child; one that still has a lot to learn, but one who thinks they know it all. 'Okay,' he replied. 'It's up to you.'

Preston craned his neck back through the window, reversed his car to a nearby store and sat silently in the old, cramped car compartment. He re-read the email on his phone and scanned the keywords that Jasper had used in a personal correspondence with him: 'Don't be late. Big opportunity. Don't cancel.' Preston glanced out from the window and into the deep blue sky; crisp and clear with rays of warm sunshine settling on the ground below. There wasn't a single person flying in the sky; and so, he decided, there would be no chance of colliding with anyone if he dared to use a wrist band. There was no user guide, no safety precautions - it was the easiest thing in the world according to Tim Cheferson. Practicality was drowning out his sense of principle and rationality. Despite his guilt for moaning at his wife at her constant defence of the iFly, he was now considering it.

'Ok,' sighed Preston in defeat. He took a deep breath, opened the car door and hesitated towards a store. 'I'll take an I-fly wrist band. Your fastest one. I have a meeting to get to,' he said, slapping his card down on the counter. The cashier slid the product to him. Preston said nothing; buried in doubt and remorse at having found himself purchasing a product he despised. It was like he had purchased a poisonous snake of which he couldn't control.

'Don't worry. They're very safe,' assured the cashier. 'They sync with your thoughts or something like that. So, imagine flying, then you'll fly. They lock on to your wrist when you're in the air so it won't fall off either.'

Preston begrudgingly ripped out the band from the plastic and held the device in his hand for a moment. It was a lime green colour with a cold rubber exterior. He had no time to admire it though, nor to wonder how the revolutionary technology fit in such a small device, so he whipped it round it his wrist and tightened it into place. It clicked like a set of handcuffs. He felt his stomach twist as he walked out into the open air, glancing at the veil of clouds above, his heart stuttering in his chest. Hesitation was short lived - and before any moment of nerves stopped him, he felt his body become weightless. Slowly the breeze started to lift him off from beneath his feet and for all of his cynicism he couldn't help think that the feeling was rapturous. He was like a crimson autumn leaf drifting in the wind. His fear shed itself from his back and fell to the ground as he drifted higher and higher; rising like a bird with new wings. The ground shrunk to a small blur beneath him and Preston acquired tremendous height in a matter of minutes; greeted by a fierce breeze as he rocketed toward the clouds. Navigating was easy. When he placed his arms down by his sides he would hurtle upwards like an athlete lifting off from a trampoline. When he moved his arms around, the band controlled the direction he moved in. Speed was instantly controlled by thought. Preston laughed to himself as he tore through the sky, turning a 4 hour commute into a trip which would pack itself into minutes. He laughed as the adrenaline pumped through his veins, cold tears streaming down his cheeks from the impact of the wind. He laughed at the empowering freedom which swelled in his body and made him feel heroic. He laughed, almost guiltily, at himself and for how long he had delayed doing this.

-

Floppy hair, round thick glasses, heavy eyes behind the lens: this is what the young coder saw in his reflection in the screen in front of him.

'Is the update ready?' said his manager.

'I can't get the code right,' he complained in return.

The manager shook his head furiously. 'That's not what I want to hear. Cheferson wants the update out tonight. He wants that code published - and he wants every wristband to automatically update itself with the new access to height when flying.'

The coder hadn't slept in days. He had dark rings around eyes like a pair of patches. 

'You want to keep this job, don't you? The future of your place with us rests on getting that code fixed. Do you understand?'

'I understand.'

-

Preston's meeting was a success. The euphoria of flying had filled him with new life; and during a talk with potential publishers for a new magazine deal, Preston's mind had been firing like a shotgun. He felt something young and wild flourishing inside of him and it turned his cheeks red at the thought of it. But he had a new challenge to overcome; and that was the busy sky. Flying in the countryside had been a perfect zone for learning how to get to grips with his wristband. But in more populous parts of the country, the sky had a system. Small, sphere like drones hovered in the sky and narrowed out pathways for people to fly in and out of. They were lit by bright luminous flares of red and yellow like airborne road reflectors. He observed that the sky now had its own highway where hundreds of people streamed in orderly lines at rapid speed. There were even large floating islands of cement for people to stop and rest; but flying required so little energy that most of these were populated by traffic wardens monitoring the traffic. He stood on one of the hovering slabs and looked into the distance; it was wild with mechanical movement and precision, a spectacle of flesh buzzing from one spot to the next, a complex web of kinetic movement. He watched how commuters whooshed past each other with a hair's distance of space, crossing junctions and vanishing into wispy clouds. It was with this overwhelming sight that his excitement started to waver, and where his instincts started to boil back up again.

'Surely, humans are not meant to fly..' He muttered to himself ashamedly; torn at the moment of indulgence he'd had during his trip to the meeting.

Every person in the sky had put their entire safety in the hands of iFly and it's little wristband. Their lives were nestled neatly into the palm of the company's massive metaphorical hand; and their little beating hearts would stop the moment it closed.

Preston decided he would use his band to hover off from the podium and then lowered himself to the scenery below. It was a few miles away from the nearest town; where he could then order a taxi. From the distance above, it looked like it was filled with winding paths and glorious greenery; and Preston decided he would take a walk to clear his mind. He lowered himself down slowly until he was three quarters of the way down when something started to happen. His decline became shuttered and started hiccupping. He felt himself drop in random split moments and then halt back to hover like the furious break of an engine. He sucked in a sharp intake of breath and suddenly plummeted several feet before hitting the stationary stop again. Preston felt his wristband vibrating. He heard a blood curling scream and then he knew that something was wrong.

As he looked up, he watched a person plummet from the sky. It was like the figure had been catapulted from the clouds and it whizzed past him, crashing into the ground. Preston cried out in horror, but more screams erupted. His own position at height failed and he fell to the ground; but he had barely any height left and his fall merely resulted in some scrapes. The shock was still rushing through his veins as he scrambled to his feet. He craned his neck back into the sky and a vision of apocalypse fell before him. Hundreds of people falling from the sky; their limp bodies freefalling into collision and spinning like spider webs. Thud. A body hit the ground like a meteorite. The rupturing of flesh and the crushing sound of bones blasted across the scenery. It thundered in Preston's ears. Smack. Another one. Preston dashed from the spot to avoid the incoming human meteors; which fell like solid bricks, each making a horrifying sound as their bodies came into impact. Whack. Wallop. Whack. Wallop. Black foggy silhouettes from the sky suddenly forming into people - and those same people into corpses. A spray of blood from one body's impact turned into a pool of crimson on the grass as civilians continued to fall to their death. Nobody was surviving because the height was tremendous. Everyone who had been midflight had suddenly been crushed by the hand of iFly; or more aptly they had been thrown out to the wind and left to die. The screams whizzed through the air followed by sudden clatters of silence. Preston felt like bombs were falling around him, but the frequency felt like a hail of gun fire. Soon it slowed, and soon quietness fell over with a deathly eeriness. When it stopped, Preston collapsed back onto the ground, ruined by the event that had happened. He was surrounded by lifeless bodies which covered miles of the empty scenery. It was like the scene of a Hollywood horror film skewed around him. He lay on his back, breathing hard and trying to focus on keeping his mind together; but his eyes were glued to the sky, the backdrop of such carnage. It was traumatic.

It soon turned dark and all that could be heard was Preston's soft, whimpering sob. His phone - which had survived the minor impact - soon started vibrating. He ignored it. It rung again and he rolled onto his side to look at the device. The call ended and an email quickly materialized instead. It was Jasper.

'Preston you were right.' It read. 'Check the news.'

He numbly opened up a news site on his phone.

'Silver update glitch causes worldwide tragedy!'

'System bug fails millions of people flying.'

'Helpless customers fall to their deaths as Silver error occurs midflight!'

Preston rolled onto his front. He threw his phone to one side and then suddenly reached for his wrist. The band was still wrapped tightly round it; and he tore it away, throwing it into the dust.